Section 4: Dweller Happiness and Health

4.1

Q: How is a dweller's health determined?

A: A dweller only gets more health when they level up, based on what their endurance is at the time (outfit included). Only endurance affects it, nothing else does, not even health pets. This means the dwellers you get at the start will probably have leveled with low endurance, meaning they'll forever be at low health. This also means to maximize health you need to train a dweller to 10 endurance while at level 1, then level them up to 50 with preferably some good endurance gear. See my other post for full details on health, including numbers and formulas. If you'd prefer a video instead, SlowbroGGOP has got you covered.

4.2

Q: How can I increase the happiness of my dwellers?

A: There are a number of ways:

• Dwellers normally stabilize at 50% happiness, but can stabilize at 75% instead of they're in a "right"" room for them. A dweller's highest SPECIAL (outfit included) is what they're "proficient" in, and in ties all tied SPECIAL count. If a dweller is working in a room that matches their proficient stat they'll stabilize at 75%. When you go to drag a dweller to a room, the room will be outlined yellow if it's not their "right" room while it will be outlined green if it is. All rooms have a stat associated with them (with crafting rooms it depends on what's currently being crafted, and it's nothing if nothing is being made), so all rooms are capable of being the "right" room for a dweller (except the vault entrance). However, for whatever reason, living quarters, training rooms, and barbershops will always display a yellow outline, despite still counting for dwellers and still being able to raise happiness. All other rooms should display a green outline when appropriate.

• Successfully rushing a room applies a happiness increase effect to the room. From the moment the success occurs it's +10% over 30 seconds. This means you can move dwellers into the room after the rush to increase their happiness, and move dwellers out of the room after to stop increasing their happiness.

• Two dwellers going at it in the living quarters raises both of their happiness to 100%. There's no way to get the happiness and not have a baby, as the moment they initiate getting it on you can no longer drag them away. You can always evict/kill off the poor child once they grow up though.

• Adding a dweller to a radio room will cause a slight vault-wide increase, see 4.5 for radio room happiness.

• There are +X% happiness pets that do exactly what they say they do. The amount they provide will increase happiness over 100% (though more than 100% is never displayed). Removing the pet removes the bonus. This means if you have a dweller at 90% and give them a +50% pet they'll go to 140% (100% will be displayed), and removing the pet will put them back to 90%.

4.3

Q: How can I get dwellers to 100% happiness?

A: Read 4.2. Room rushing and/or breeding are the two easiest ways to do it.

4.4

Q: Why are my dwellers losing happiness?

A: There a number of things that can cause this. An important thing to note is that any present source of decreasing happiness trumps all sources of increasing happiness. In other words if you do two room rushes, where one is a failure and the other is a success, regardless of which occurs first the decrease in happiness takes priority. Here's the full list of sources:

• Being in the same room as a dead dweller is a huge hit to happiness. Either revive the dweller or remove them. If dwellers are complaining about a dead body when clearly none are present, that's a known glitch (see 16.2).

• Being heavily injured or irradiated will decrease happiness. Be sure to have enough food and water to avoid either of those things happening, and also be sure to heal dwellers after an attack if they get very injured.

• Failing a rush in a room does the exact inverse of succeeding a rush, applying a happiness decrease effect to the room that's -10% over 30 seconds. You can move dwellers into the room after the rush to decrease their happiness, and move dwellers out of the room after to stop decreasing their happiness (though if you move everyone out of the room the incident can then spread to any connected rooms). Oddly enough even if you move a dweller out of the room, while their happiness will stop decreasing you won't be able to increase it until the penalty is gone from the room they were in.

• Removing a dweller from a radio room will cause a slight vault-wide decrease, see 4.5 for radio room happiness.

• Removing a +X% happiness pet from a dweller takes that bonus away. There is no way to remove such a pet and not take the hit to happiness for that dweller (there used to be, it was patched). As such these pets are really only a band-aid solution to happiness.

4.5

Q: How do radio rooms affect happiness?

A: First, note that the kind of dweller you use has no bearing on the happiness boost (including a dweller's charisma), and neither does the level of the radio room. All that matters is how many dwellers are in radio rooms and how many are together.

When you put any dweller in a radio room it increases the happiness of everyone in the vault by 0.5% to 1%. This includes moving dwellers in to deal with an incident. Removing a dweller from a radio room (including a dweller leaving after dealing with an incident) does the inverse and decreases the happiness of everyone in the vault by 0.5% to 1%. If a dweller is not in the vault for adding or removing from the radio room their happiness is completely unaffected. As a consequence of this if you have 100% dwellers and you put someone in a radio room then take them out, those dwellers will now be at 99% even though the net position of dwellers is the same.

The magnitude of the boost depends on how many other dwellers are in the same radio room. If they're alone it's the minimum 0.5%, while if they're with five others in a triple room it's the maximum 1%. How full a room is doesn't matter, just how many dwellers are in the room (meaning single and double rooms are limited just because you can't put as many in them as triples). This means for optimal happiness boosts you're best filling triple rooms with dwellers as opposed to filling single or double rooms or scattering dwellers around different radio rooms. For example, six dwellers in six different rooms provides a 3% boost. Six dwellers filling three single rooms provides a ~4% boost, four dwellers in a double and two in a single provides ~5%, while six in a triple provides 6%.

Happiness boosts from radio rooms can be stacked as much as you want. Remember though that they're a one time effect when you put a dweller into the room, and you'll have to deal with losing happiness when removing any dwellers. Since a filled triple room provides a total of 6% upon moving the dwellers in, you could for example fill four triple rooms for 24%.

4.6

Q: How can I see how much health my dwellers have?

A: There's no way in-game unfortunately, you'll have to rely on a save editor of some kind just to view the numbers. See 15.2.